Classifying Tropes, Trivia, YMMV, Audience Reactions and Flame Bait

In the previous project about Fan-Speak it was decided that we should organize tropes into several categories. As of the previous thread it was proposed that those should be:

• Tropes: The heart and soul of the wiki. These are items that classify the basic elements of story telling. They are what goes on the main pages.
  • Examples: The Hero, Cool Chair, Gingerbread House
• YMMV: These are also elements of story telling. We know that creators use them purposely to evoke specific emotions in the audience. The only problem is, that because they're emotional people disagree if they're there or not.
  • Examples: Tearjerker, Happy Ending, Bittersweet Ending
• Audience Reactions: These are NOT tropes. These are reactions that the fandom has about various things related to the work.
  • Examples: And The Fandom Rejoiced, Shipping, Fanon Discontinuity
• Trivia: Side information that is about the work, but doesn't really effect it. Interesting little facts.
  • Examples: Fan Nickname, The Other Marty, What Could Have Been
• Flame Bait: This can actually overlap with other categories. It's the classification for items that just cause flame wars and thus aren't the sort of thing we really need people talking about.
  • Examples: "Stop Having Fun" Guys

What we need to do is figure out how to define these groups and what should go where.

edited 28th Jan '11 12:29:22 PM by shimaspawn

You forgot Trivia.

We have two type of definitions: What an argenfargle ultimately *is*, like a Trope or a Reaction, and what properties it has, like being Flame Bait.

Whoops. I added Trivia to the list.

Eh, close, but a few things I disagree with.

• YMMV is not a label applied to tropes — it should be used on the works page when there's debate over whether the trope applies or not. It applies to the usage of the trope, not the trope itself.
• Audience Reactions aren't "fandom-related articles", they're "how fans feel about a work". It's things like Tear Jerker and The Woobie, not just stuff like And The Fandom Rejoiced and Broken Base.
• Trivia isn't stuff that "doesn't affect the work" — it's stuff like Real Life Writes the Plot, which can absolutely affect the work, but you wouldn't know about it from the work itself. It would also encompass things like Physics Goof, assuming that idea gets confirmed in the other thread. Basically, things that might be useful and/or entertaining to know, but are related to information outside the work.

The category we're defining has been nicknamed "YMMV tropes" to get away from the word 'subjective' and because people can legitimately disagree about their inclusion in a work despite the criteria being objective; an example given earlier was that a Happy Ending might, due to fridge logic, not turn out to be happy in one troper's mind despite the author intending it to be.

I still think they should be called "Opinions".

I think Opinions may be more accurate, but I think it's worse from a War On Natter standpoint.

• Your Mileage May Vary: Means that while you might not agree, it's generally this.
• Opinion: Say whatever the fuck you want. It doesn't matter.

People will see opinion and think Troper Tales.

edited 28th Jan '11 1:58:59 PM by shimaspawn

How about Opinionated Tropes then?

Anyway, first we need to decide how we intend to treat examples in each category. Is YMMV going to be just a formal distinction, with possibly some kind of warning in the article not to argue examples needlessly, or do we not allow examples in the main article for works/creators as we do now. After all by the definition these are tropes the examples of which only apply when author intent and execution meets the right audience expectations. This gets even more complicated since, if you stretch the definition of "people disagree if they're there or not" enough, some of our most popular current tropes fit here, like everything related to fanservice, Rule of Cool, Rule of Funny and so on.

Audience Reactions and Trivia can also overlap the way they are defined here. For example Fan Nickname can be both, unless all audience reactions need to have a subjective element or are otherwise considered Trivia. Another way to separate them would be to limit Trivia to production-related matters and the aforementioned failures to emulate real science.

Finally, Flame Bait. I can also see this handled several ways. First, we can do what the former fan-speak banners suggested and keep it completely example-free apart from in-story use. I don't particularly like this one, since a page without examples might as well be cut for all the good it does anyone. Second option - we isolate them completely from the rest of the wiki like the current Flame Bait banner suggests, in which case might as well move them to Darth Wiki so that people can at least bash away therapeutically. Or we can do that signed examples only, zero disputing thing that was suggested in the last thread. Possibly aided by some kind of bot to clean out second and third level bullets periodically. Of course if you're really dedicated you can just post a response without the bullet, but that does seem like a good compromise.

That's how I see it anyway.

edited 28th Jan '11 2:07:19 PM by Killomatic

I do like requiring signed posts, no responses on Flamebait. It seems to have worked for Dethroning Moment Of Suck.

edited 28th Jan '11 2:18:52 PM by shimaspawn

I think Eddie placed them on More Like A Footnote Than Anything Else, if that means anything.

Which one is "them" exactly?

I put the definition of Fan Speak on the footnotes index. It (fanspeak) is no longer an index or banner category.

edited 28th Jan '11 2:34:57 PM by FastEddie

When did you apply the YMMV icons next to all the YMMV links? They're showing up on all pages (they shouldn't show up on Trope pages) and they're showing up on Pot Holes too.

I think Kilomatic raises a good point about "YMMV Tropes". We can really go overboard with whether tropes are debatable or not. Just using myself as an example I think a large amount of tropes falling under the Rule of Cool aren't cool at all. If we move all things that could be considered YMMV off work pages, we'd be left with a much smaller work page. It probably is best to just put the YMMV mark by them and leave them on the page.

That boat has sailed long, long ago. We already have YMMV subpages.

It's true we don't have some mathematical rule on what qualifies for YMMV. My impression is that the story of YMMV starts with that effort editors put into making an example neutral and complete- in other words, making it not invite an argument.

The amount of effort varies, but usually there's at least some effort there- or at least this follows from the hypothesis that somewhere deep inside what people would actually like to put is "HAHAHHA look here's my FAVORITE CHARACTER obviously if you don't worship him you don't have half a brain". Somewhere in the twilight zone of just a wee bit effort you get "oh so much" and "awesome" example pitching.

Whether this effort is enough depends not only on the effort itself but also on the nature of the trope- on how subjective it is. In my experience it is prefectly feasible to make a YMMV example that does not attract natter at all, no matter how contentious the subject. It's just not practical to rely on this always being the case, or even this being the typical case.

Obviously if something is decidedly subjective it gets a YMMV banner no matter what, but for the gray area- and most of it is gray area- what YMMV means is "subjective enough that the average effort just doesn't cut it". Examples are added in good faith, but too many of them don't cover all the bases, don't make concessions to opposite viewpoints, use too much "HA HA Take That! opposite internet faction" rhetoric. For less contentious tropes this is just annoying to read, but if the item is too subjective the typical example amounts to some sort of subjectivity critical mass that causes a huge natter chain reaction.

Some tropes we can point to decisively and say "subjective" or "objective", but for those that we can't, we start looking at "tends to get too many examples that people will likely feel the need to argue with". For those tropes YMMV isn't so much a well-defined category as it is just a practical solution. I don't think it's productive to go look for the clear, solid YMMV line, for the same reason you don't need to have a rigorous definition of what counts as trash for a trash can to be useful. It's a tool fueled by judgment calls, and it seems to be working well enough.

edited 28th Jan '11 7:33:51 PM by TripleElation

Since It will probably get lost in the shuffle otherwise on the ginormous original thread, I have a proposal I'd like to repost here. Or should I delete this post and make a new thread?

I just want to say I like the little YMMV scales.

I don't think they should apply to potholes as that would seem to discourage all reference to such tropes from the main site, causing schizophrenia on a mass scale. As an entire group of tropes that are legitimate and have little in common with each other besides being YMMV, starved of wicks on the main site. Most such uses (non-bulleted citations) are in passing and are not meant as natter or snark bait. Obviously the real target of this inquiry is bulleted YMMV tropes.

I would also recommend turning the whole YMMV namespace into a drop-down at the bottom of the page, about the size and shape of the index bars, since they are often a small or large collection of tropes whose only thing in common is that they are YMMV.

This could be done without reprogramming the YMMV namespace itself, merely adding a function to the parser. Like the index banners at the bottom of the page that pull info from other pages on the site.

The drop-down could have its own edit button and the info in the drop-down (unlike other collapsible folders) would be its own separate file titled YMMV.Trope — the same separate files that exist at present.

The drop-down at the bottom could read:

(icon) YMMV — Subjective Tropes, Audience Reactions, or other tropes for which Your Mileage May Vary go in this folder. Some of these may only be held by a minority of the audience, so no disagreement is necessary. Please do not list them as separate tropes on the main article above this line unless they are cited in the work itself. (Edit) (icon)

And you'd have to click on it to pop it open like a folder, whereupon the text from the YMMV page would appear.

The Edit link in the banner would take you to YMMV.Trope&action=edit.

A hard link to YMMV.Trope would still take you to the "real" page.

This would make it easier for people who both love and hate YMMV tropes to keep tabs on that section (to police natter) without causing wiki schizophrenia, e.g. a motley collection of tropes that are more or less accurate but only make sense in the context of the page above, especially if they are mostly divorced from the main-page wicks. In fact, it'd make it very easy to police natter since it wouldn't consign YMMV to the shadows, merely make those tropes subservient to the main page. But it would be of most benefit to non-editors who merely appreciate reading the content and don't know where it went.

(And yes, I think this could be done for Trivia as well, although frankly I think the idea of removing stuff like The Other Marty from the main site is a bit obsessive. The perfect is oftentimes the enemy of the good.)

edited 28th Jan '11 7:29:35 PM by berr

This thread is surprisingly slow.

@Triple Elation, I think one or both of us is misunderstanding here. What we currently have in the tab we call YMMV is mostly Audience Reactions, things we have agreed are not tropes. YMMV as defined in the OP are tropes or at least close enough for many of them to currently be considered tropes like Happy Ending and Bittersweet Ending. I never suggested we let Audience Reactions back in the main article. What I was asking was if we want to treat YMMV (once again using the term as defined by shimaspawn and not having any connection to the YMMV banner) as tropes (listed in the main article/character sheet) or as Audience Reactions (confined to their own tab), since they're kind of in between. If we pick the latter option then the YMMV/Audience Reaction distinction will be purely academic, unless we make separate tabs and banners for them, which I don't see why we would.

And that is about as clear as I can make it right now.

Interesting idea, good in theory at least. I'm not certain the code allows for nested sub pages like this though and it will likely push the bigger pages past the parser's capabilities again. Of course, I know jack about programming, so we'll need confirmation from Eddie on that.

Edit: Also, how would this relate to character sheets? Many articles have a "no character tropes on the main page" and "no general tropes on the character sheet" policy, but the subjective stuff is not segregated on the sub pages.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:22:05 AM by Killomatic

I agree with that, but by this definition, Happy Ending and Bittersweet Ending are also objective, at least as much as 90% of our other tropes. They don't have the problems associated with YMMV, they don't cause natter or edit wars.

edited 29th Jan '11 4:22:46 AM by EternalSeptember

AMNK is adding every page bearing a subjective banner to YMMV, but a lot of those tropes have that banner only because Fast Eddie moved them out of Fan-Speak into Audience Reactions. Is this OK? (I think not.)

No, I just opened another thread about it.

@September: I agree, by that criterion Happy Ending and Bittersweet Ending are tropes and not YMMV items.

@Killomatic: From what I gather the decision to put YMMV and Audience Reactions (before we made that distinction) in a separate tab was strongly motivated by things that still apply to both categories. If anything the properties of what we now call YMMV items were explicitly cited as reasons for why we should have YMMV tabs, and Audience Reactions logically followed because they get the same problems, only more so.

For the purpose of "does it or doesn't it belong on the main page?" the two are highly similar.

edited 29th Jan '11 9:00:21 AM by TripleElation

If we treat them the same and lump them together on the same tab there's no point in making the distinction apart from saying "this is a trope and this isn't", which most people aren't that interested in anyway.

Judging from his recent posts, Fast Eddie is really big right now on setting the record straight regarding what we do and what we don't call a trope. At any rate, it's a useful distinction to have, regardless of whether it has any impact on where we're allowed to link what.